The death of Nykea Aldridge on Friday afternoon is a death of the sort that's become sadly familiar in Chicago this summer. A young mother fatally shot on the street — this time accidentally, after hundreds of others that were intentional. What made Aldridge's death unusual is that she had a famous relative, Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade. Wade tweeted about his cousin's death, in a call to address the gun violence that has plagued the city.
Wade's hashtag, #EnoughIsEnough, was a slogan used at the start of ESPN's annual awards show this year by Wade and other basketball stars to try to draw attention to the problem of gun violence. "The end of gun violence in places like Chicago, Dallas, not to mention Orlando, has to stop," Wade said during the program. "Enough. Enough is enough." Wade wasn't the only one to tweet about Aldridge's death. So did Donald Trump, on Saturday morning.
Trump's message was different. "Just what I have been saying," he said about Aldridge's death. Which is true: Trump has been regularly using gun homicides in Chicago as a broader representation of an increase in violent crime across the nation — an increase for which there isn't evidence. Moreover, he's been using gun violence in Chicago as a way of arguing somewhat circuitously that he deserves more support from black voters. In most national polling, Trump gets the support of a handful of black respondents, usually in the low single digits. It's probably in part because Trump has been seen as appealing to bigotry in his campaign rhetoric, as Quinnipiac University showed in a poll earlier this week. That belief is one that extends well beyond black voters.
It's also probably in part because black Americans have been supporting Democratic candidates by wide margins for decades. Trump has tried to use this as an awkward appeal to black voters, suggesting that since things aren't perfect for black Americans, they should give his candidacy a shot. "What do you have to lose?" he has asked repeatedly, in a pitch that seems hard to outdo for ineffectiveness.
It's fitting to end by talking about Nykea Aldridge. The Chicago Tribune reports that she and a man were walking down the street at 3:30 p.m., having gone to register her children for school at the Dulles School of Excellence. Someone tried to kill the man Aldridge was with, hitting her by mistake. Four children, one a newborn, lost their mother. Update: At about noon Saturday, Trump deleted the original tweet. Shortly afterward, he tweeted it again. The problem? He'd spelled Wade's name wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...a-high-profile-murder-into-a-campaign-appeal/
Wade's hashtag, #EnoughIsEnough, was a slogan used at the start of ESPN's annual awards show this year by Wade and other basketball stars to try to draw attention to the problem of gun violence. "The end of gun violence in places like Chicago, Dallas, not to mention Orlando, has to stop," Wade said during the program. "Enough. Enough is enough." Wade wasn't the only one to tweet about Aldridge's death. So did Donald Trump, on Saturday morning.
Trump's message was different. "Just what I have been saying," he said about Aldridge's death. Which is true: Trump has been regularly using gun homicides in Chicago as a broader representation of an increase in violent crime across the nation — an increase for which there isn't evidence. Moreover, he's been using gun violence in Chicago as a way of arguing somewhat circuitously that he deserves more support from black voters. In most national polling, Trump gets the support of a handful of black respondents, usually in the low single digits. It's probably in part because Trump has been seen as appealing to bigotry in his campaign rhetoric, as Quinnipiac University showed in a poll earlier this week. That belief is one that extends well beyond black voters.
It's also probably in part because black Americans have been supporting Democratic candidates by wide margins for decades. Trump has tried to use this as an awkward appeal to black voters, suggesting that since things aren't perfect for black Americans, they should give his candidacy a shot. "What do you have to lose?" he has asked repeatedly, in a pitch that seems hard to outdo for ineffectiveness.
It's fitting to end by talking about Nykea Aldridge. The Chicago Tribune reports that she and a man were walking down the street at 3:30 p.m., having gone to register her children for school at the Dulles School of Excellence. Someone tried to kill the man Aldridge was with, hitting her by mistake. Four children, one a newborn, lost their mother. Update: At about noon Saturday, Trump deleted the original tweet. Shortly afterward, he tweeted it again. The problem? He'd spelled Wade's name wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...a-high-profile-murder-into-a-campaign-appeal/
Josh Jordan @NumbersMuncher 
